After musing on the importance of caring for and nurturing our bodies as a critical pathway to be the best we can be, I’m compelled to tackle a topic that goes hand-in-hand but is way less comfortable. Body image.
Yes, our mental regard of our bodies is just as important as our physical regard.
Some may chuckle in disbelief that, barely standing at 5’2″ and weighing in at 108 pounds, I’d ever struggled with how my body looks, but self judgment and self loathing are nondiscriminatory to size or shape. The demons that have occupied my mind are every bit as big and real as those haunting a person twice my size.
My mother adoring me and my all-too-pinchable cheeks as a little girl.
As a child, I was a walking billboard for my family’s restaurant. Much to my painful dismay, I had chubby cheeks that screamed, “Pinch me!” and bore testament to how well fed I was (or overfed, as the case really was).
From the beginning of grade school, where my best friend was a cute, thin Taiwanese girl, I became known as “the Fat One” and she, “the Pretty, Skinny One.” My impressionable young mind equated skinny with pretty, pretty with desirable, desirable with lovable, and downhill the slippery slope continued. How about that for a load to start carrying at the tender age of six?
The constant comparisons and teasing from other kids planted the belief that I was inherently flawed because of my appearance. I still remember the gripping fear I felt in the third grade when we were sent in pairs to the nurse’s office to be weighed, when I hit the scale at a hefty 85 pounds.
My parents were no help for solace or guidance. My father laughed off my concern, trying to reassure me it was just “baby fat” out of which I would surely grow. Besides, in the Chinese culture, it’s a sign of good fortune to never want for enough to eat.
When my older sister was a teenager, our father sought from a dietician professional help managing her weight. Because I wasn’t afforded the same opportunity, I assumed that meant I wasn’t loved as much as my sister. Never mind that I was just ten or eleven and otherwise healthy.
At some indiscernible point around my ‘tween years, my growth in height began to stretch out my pudgy frame. My father called it correctly – I eventually outgrew my childhood weight, but the emotional burden remained long after the pounds.
While I’ve been fortunate that my self-consciousness never has evolved into an eating disorder, it since has shadowed my life in some form or another. Only in recent time have I begun to see how paramount it is to feel at home in my own skin and to own and love this body that carries and protects my heart and soul through the journey of this life.
We, ourselves, must first love and appreciate our bodies for what they are before we can expect others to love and appreciate us.
We demonstrate this self-love and acceptance through self-nurture and choosing wisely what we put into and onto our bodies, by knowing how hard to push ourselves and when to pull back.
Our bodies are incredible machines that are here to serve us for the long haul. The body we each have is the only one we get. If we abuse ourselves emotionally through constant negative self-judgment and berating self-talk, our bodies absorb every thought. Those thoughts become embedded in our very psyche and eventually become our reality, a snow job not only for ourselves but also for the impression we leave others.
If we dwell on what we perceive to be wrong, it becomes a never-ending cycle impossible to conquer.
Turn the tables and replace self-loathing with gratitude, gratitude for how our bodies serve us every day.
Whether it’s the ability to rise each day and do our work, to serve those who rely on us, two-legged and four, or even at a more basic level, our ability to squint at the golden rays of a sunrise, to smell a fresh pot of coffee brewing or to hear a baby’s cry, if we look, we’re surrounded with endless ways our bodies serves us, all worthy of gratitude.
We owe it to our very existence to honor our bodies for the temples they are, priceless vessels seeing us through every precious day of this life.
It’s high time to stop the self-abuse and love our bodies exactly as we are, beautifully imperfect and all. We’ll find no fix more potent than self-love and self-nurture.
